Voices on NOAA Weather Radio
Up until the late 1990s, NOAA Weather Radio used a manual system to put forecasts on-air, with staff members recording themselves, then placing the tapes, later digital recordings, into the broadcast cycle. The National Weather Service remedied this issue, as more and more transmitters were being put up across the country, by creating the Console Replacement System (CRS), later replaced by the Broadcast Message Handler (BMH), which generated broadcasts using text to speech, and allowed for faster delivery of emergency messages. Console Replacement System voices (Retired) Paul/Igor/Paulina Paul, sometimes referred to as "Igor" for deeper variants and "Paulina" for higher variants., was the first voice to be heard on NOAA Weather Radio. This voice used the DECTalk speech synthesizer, and was used up until 2002 - 2004, eventually being set to only read the ID of most stations, and the current local time. The deeper variants of Paul (Igor) likely uses the "Harry" preset on the DECTalk synthesizer, and the higher variants (Paulina) using either the "Kit" or "Ursula" presets depending on the station. Craig Around late 2002, the National Weather Service worked on making a Voice Improvement Processor (VIP) system to try and fix the dissatisfaction with Paul's voice. One of the first voices to come out of these improvements was Craig, a voice originally developed by AT&T Bell Labs , and later acquired by SpeechWorks.The original NWS CRS/VIP webpage from the early 2000s This voice was used up until 2004, getting replaced by the Tom voice, as per the release of Speechify v2.0 engine. Donna Donna was the second voice that was added with the new VIP system, also originally developed by AT&T Bell Labs, and acquired by SpeechWorks. Donna was improved with the Speechify v2.0 engine, and kept alongside Tom when the voice replaced Craig. Tom Tom was added in 2004, replacing the initial Craig voice. The voice uses the Speechify v2.0 engine, this time developed mainly by SpeechWorks. The voice is based off of the voice-over/music artist Tom Glynn, who has done work for companies such as United Airlines, Motorola, Apple, and others. Javier (Spanish) Javier was added around the same time as Tom, but wasn't used until Spanish sites were implemented into some parts of the country. The voice was made by SpeechWorks, using the Speechify v2.0 engine. WR IVRer (Roger) There isn't much information on the WR IVRer, as there are no available recordings of it being used, and it's not mentioned on the "Voices Used on NOAA Weather Radio" page on the NWS website. The semi-official name for the voice is "Roger," as found through SpeechFX's site for the RealVoice TTS engine. Broadcast Message Handler voices (Current) Paul The Paul voice heard on the current BMH is a voice developed by NeoSpeech, using the VoiceText speech engine. This voice replaced the previous Paul, Donna, and Tom voices in 2016Voices Used on NOAA Weather Radio. During July of 2019, the National Weather Service (supposedly) had forgotten to update the licensing of the software used to generate the TTS of the BMH, causing a nation-wide problem that caused the voice to say that it was only a demo. Violetta (Spanish) Violetta is the voice heard on the BMH for the Spanish stations of NOAA Weather Radio. It is developed by NeoSpeech, using the VoiceText speech engine. The same issue that occurred with licensing of the voice that occurred with Paul also occurred with this voice over Spanish stations of NWR. References